Maybe the solution would be to not elect these people directly and instead have the parliament/city council elect these? That way a coalition can form organically. It's working quite nicely in most European countries.

That shouldn't be a insurmountable issue though. When I buy a house all the carpets come out and get replaced with wood floors and everything gets repainted. Otherwise it's just gross.

I just started learning R and am still in the phase of learning a new language where I feel insecure that I picked the tight language to learn. Can anyone say anything about how R relates to the examples we have seen here for Python and Julia? Also Julia seems yo be the new hotness in this space, is that right? Should I skip R and learn Julia instead?

Helping poor people is extremely hard. I am pretty confident that going to Mars is solvable by just throwing enough money at it. Solving poverty for more than a very breve period is much harder. There was an episode about the problems the Millenium Villages project was encountering (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/01/nina_munk_on_po.htm...) and it just made clear how many problems there are to overcome that you just don't consider. I am not saying it's unsolvable, but it's harder than traveling to Mars or making a self driving car. So Elon is the safer bet.

The same thing happened to me in China when I tried to speak Mandarin. Fortunately, however, there were many people who couldn't switch to English because they didn't speak it.

Also brings up the question why they are so big and not competing? Maybe the deal should be rejected and investigated why they aren't competing for customers. They should be at each other's throats and not making nice nice!

I can't stand it anymore! Why are we prosecuting these people instead of Comcast who is on a course to destroy our infrastructure? Of course I know the answer. I just can't deal with it anymore. I will just stop reading any news.

Can we get a god damn amendment to the constitution that enforced net neutrality and prohibits ISPs from doing anything but being ISPs, already?! The net is part of the infrastructure of our country and needs to be neutral! Anyone who fucks with that should be charged with terrorism.

To me the solution is clear: tear down the shitty Victorians and build skyscrapers instead. It made me terribly upset to see that the new buildings in Mission Bay are only 5-6 stories. Nothing that gets build in SF should be under 30 stories. We need living space and lots of it, so that prices come down.

Well, I understand why the Russian government is doing this. I don't have much confidence in the Ruble and am pretty sure I am not the only one. So BTC might be a viable alternative. An alternative that the Russian government has no control over.